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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-07-08, Page 2MOST IMPROVED ATHLSTE-i-David Demaray and Andrea Haasnoot received the awards for most irtiproved male and female athlete when Grey Central held its Gracie 8', graduating exercises. Presenting the awards was the teacher Bob Livermore. , (Photo by Ranney) Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston EST,.N. 1872 russels Post BRUSSELS ONT, Box 50, Brussels, Ontario Established 1872 519-887-6641 NOG 1 HO Serving Brussels and the surrounding community Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Andrew Y, McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circutation. Authorized as second class mail by Canada Post Office. Registration Number 0562. WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1981 Short Shots by Evelyn Kennedy If all the skies were sunshine Our faces would be fain To feel once more upon them The cooling plash of rain. -Henry van Dyke * * * * * This is the day (Wednesday July 8) of the Porkchop barbecue at St. John's Anglican Church. If you like expertly barbecued porkchops you can get them there from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. * * * * * Canada Day passed very quietly here. There was no evidence of celebration i of any kind. How many of us took time outito remember just how lucky we are to be Canadians. With all Canada's troubles it is still a good place to be. Consider what goes on in the rest of the world, wars, the horrendous activities of terrorists, mass murders, the starvation of thousands. It is time we looked on bright side, took a look at the many • should be grateful for.' When we think t :.he people of the world who are homeless and hungry we should be happy if we have a comfortable nome and plenty to eat without demanding luxuries. Oh yes, Canada has problems but it is still a great country. We are the envy of many who wish they were Canadians and wish they had it so good. * * * * * Canadians said a last farewell to Terry Fox as his presence left us to rest at peace in a hillside cemetery. But Terry is very much with us in the hearts of Canadians across this land. He will live in memory in the years to come. A gallant youth, who, ignoring his handicap, strove to make a dream come ' true. He gave courage and hope to those who, like him, were the victims of cancer. He inspired Canadians from coast to coast to support his Marathon of Hope so research BY DEBBIE RANNEY There's not a lot you can take with you when you set out for a camping trip on horseback and if you're like Joan Van Den Broeck and daughter Lisa of Saltford, you may just have to settle for a bedroll, a change of clothes and $51.65 in cash. Mrs. Van Den Broeck and 10 year old Lisa spent Wednesday night sleeping out, in the open air of the Maitland Valley Conservaton Authority Park in Brussels. They were sustained by food given to them by Mrs. Jack Vader, Michelle Vader and Sherri Heibein who brought coffee, muffins and chips and if it had rained they had offers of accomodation from the Vaders and Albert. Ten Pas. "We were really pleased because people made sure we had a good time in Brussels. It was really pleasant," she said. While on the road, they stop at general stores and restaurants for food. They had spent Tuesday night at the East Wavvanosh Conservation area and as they were leaving Brussels, planned to continue their journey on to Blyth, then Bayfield and if the money was still holding up, perhaps even further than that. Mrs. Van Den Broeck calls the camping can go forward, as never before, to find the answer to defeat the dread disease that has now taken his life. May what he accom- plished be not in vain. * * * Baseball fans have been bereft of their game this season. Their favourite sports figures have forsaken then in playing a game of their own for more money. Have these ball players forgotten whence comes the money to pay their salaries. It is not from club owners, or other top brass, it is from the fans who fill the stands to watch them play ball and from T.V. revenue. What will happen when this strike is over? Will the disgruntled fans come flooding back to pay for even more expensive tickets? Will easy-chair.fans again be in front of their T.V. sets or will many decide they can get along • without the thrill of baseball games. * *it * There is an interesting display in the window of the building formerly occupied by Jacob's Saddlery. It was placed there by the Huron County Pioneer Museum of Goderich. There is also one item displayed in the window at Cal Krauter's Shop. If you have not yet seen them take a look. They will tell you something about the life of Huron ounty pioneers. * * * * * No baseball to watch but hurray!- the C.F.L. season has arrived. Thank goodness those hefty guys who provide that sport are not on strike. Their fans can collect the evening's light refreshment and settle down to watch that exciting action for weeks, and' months to come. It is a rough game but there is also speed,agility and skilli so far the only eastern team to win their opening game of the season was Hamilton. * * * * * Police in the U.S. stopped the driver of an 18-wheel tractor trailer after he smashed into eight cars, injured four people and slammed through a roadblock, only to discover the driver was a 12-year-old boy. trip, "a good experience for Lisa." "It's something we always wanted to do so we left. We aren't equipped to bring food or anything. This is what you call roughing it," she said. They start out in the mornings around 9:30 or 10 o'clock and don't usually reach their destination until 7 or 8 in the evening. Settled on their horses--Tillie, a five year old Palomindsaddlebred for Mrs. Van Deni Broeck and Red, a five year old Bay gelding for Lisa, they figure on travelling 15-20 miles per day. They spend about $10 a day between the two of them and in the last few days had been spending around $9. Mrs. Van Den Broeck's husband is a Scouter and has gone out west with the boy scouts for two weeks so there's no hurry for them to get home. As she said,"If you waited till you had all the things you need to go on a trip like this, you'd never go.' Perhaps their biggest struggle is finding a convenient place to brush their teeth. "I don't mid sleeping on the ground and I don't Mind riding all day, but I can't stand it when I can't brush my teeth," Mrs. Van Den Broeck said. Those of us having to live with the consequences of the current mail strike find it hard to have much good to say about the Canadian Union of Postal Employees. It is even harder to have sympathy with the postal workers when one hears that they are already earning more than $9 per hour as a starting wage and want to work that up .to $11. Now if you're an ordinary joe working for less than that amount, the strike makes you doubly angry. Most of us have blamed the mess the post office is in on the postal workers. Oh, we've been ready to give our share of curses to the government as well but for the most part we've ignored the people in the middle: the post office management. We haven't tended to listen very well when the postal employ- ees grumbled about the way they've been treated by management. When the workers complained about new automated postal sorting equipment we thought they were just protecting their jobs. When they worried about being watched by closed-circuit televi- sion cameras we thought maybe if they worked harder they'd have nothing to worry about. After all, it takes longer for a letter to get from here to Toronto today in the jet age than in the days of the horse and buggy. I began to look at things a little differently a couple of months back when I was listening to a radio program that interviewed a number of men at a reunion of post office employees who used to work in the mail cars of the railway lines. These particular postal employees worked on the prairies but I'm sure a good deal of what they had to say would have applied everywhere in Canada. THE ELITE The men explained that they were considered the elite of postal employees. They went on board a train in one major centre (I think it was Winnipeg) with bags of mail destined for points along the line. They were locked in the cars and all the time the train was travelling they would be working, sorting the mail that would go to this town or that. Along the way there would be stops in towns to drop off the mail for that town and pick up 'outgoing mail. There was also a slot in the door where someone could mail a letter directly. The mail bags brought on at each stop would then be sorted as the train travelled to the next town and probably if you mailed a letter at one town along the line for the next town say 20 miles distant, it would be there Continued from page 1 Hurricane Hazel tlood line. The flood way is to be maintained as an Open Space corridor for recreation and visual enjoyment by the community. The flood fringe may be considered for urban development* subject to certain policies. • The two zone approach allows some flexibility for filling and deVdlopment in the floodplain by relating the level of restriction to the degree of risk. Mr, Dzus said they were trying to clean up the floodplain policy that council and the Authority had agreed to Some time ago and in less than an hour. Today of course it could take days. By the time the train had reached its final destination the mail car employees would get off with all the mail sorted ready for speedy delivery. Today trucks have replaced the train and all the mail would likely be picked up, trucked all the way to Winnipeg, sorted by machine and (if the letter wasn't mangled in the equipment) be shipped back out by the next truck. A letter that once travelled 20 miles to its destination may today go hundreds. MORE EFFICIENT Now I'm no insider when it comes to the history of the post office but I think I can bet what happened. Somebody decided that the post office had to be more efficient and the example of efficiency as based on the example of industry was to centralize and automize. There is efficiency in scale so why not build huge postal stations where all the sorting can be done instead of in mail cars and all those little post offices. Industry proved machines are more efficient than men so bring in the computerized, electronic wizzard to replace people. So today we have a situation where something like half the mail in Canada passes through one huge sorting plant in the Toronto area. The problem is, the post office isn't like any other industry. Industry could centralize for efficiency by simply taking the cream off the crop. To hell with the little towns out in the sticks when you can get all the business you need at low cost in the industrial heartland or Toronto, Hamilton and so on. But the post office to do its job must still serve all those little inefficient towns 'and villages and hamlets, must reach all those farmers on their rural routes. It's not economical and would make an efficiency expert faint dead away but the post office simply must continue to serve all the people. But as long as you have such a decentralized organization you cannot apply the same rules of efficiency that business schools generally teach. It seems to me that is where the post office made its first mistake and in making that one decision to centralize mail sorting it has set the course to the mess we're in. It still doesn't make me feel any better about postal workers getting $9 an hour but at least it might make their frustration more understandable. We're all just as frustrated. in doing that, they should be able to finalize the secondary plan. He'said it should also open the way to get approval for the new subdivision (McDonald -Bryans-Krauter) at the south end of town. The secondary plan was only given partial approval previously because the government wanted more definite floodlines. Mr. Dzus said those areas marginally affected by flooding can be developed with floodproofing measures and that both the Planning Department and the, Conservation Authority were prepared to go ahead with the secondary plait. To Brussels, by horseback Will discuss mapping iii G Iii ei VV H B] St M be 8I M Ce of T rE nt T H SC et A SE he D. er Fi Ri of M of Rr ini gr gr aei W Sa Cr1 P. Oft 131 cc Co Jed ers